Sam Smith shares new holiday song ‘Night Before Christmas’
Pop music prodigy Sam Smith has just dropped their most recent holiday-themed single, the smokey and relaxed ‘Night Before Christmas’.
With little more than a guitar and a piano bolstering the arrangement, ‘Night Before Christmas’ can either hit you right in the pleasure centre or put you to sleep, depending on how you like to take your Christmas tunes. While the song can be a bit slow and meandering at times, ‘Night Before Christmas’ does let Smith lay out without trying too hard.
That kind of ease and breeziness benefits a singer like Smith. If all you know of them is their piercing high falsetto or overwrought ballads, then Smith can certainly come off as an acquired taste. But ‘Night Before Christmas’ keeps its scope small, aiming to be a nice fireside love song and nothing more. In that respect, it succeeds.
Smith doesn’t exactly need to be peddling holiday songs – they literally just scored a cross-continental number one hit with Kim Petras on ‘Unholy’. But ’tis the season, with everyone from Future Islands to Tkay Maidza to Phoebe Bridgers throwing out their own yuletide tracks. I can’t tell if it’s a genuine phenomenon or a necessary evil. There have always been holiday songs, but now there’s a distinct push to try and make “cool” holiday songs.
‘Night Before Christmas’ isn’t “cool”, but that is probably what gives it its charming lilt. Smith clearly wants to be more like Bing Crosby than Mariah Carey, at least on this track. It’ll sit nicely next to the other “uncool” songs that will appear on Smith’s Christmas compilation The Holly and The Ivy, which first came out back in 2020.
Check out the audio for ‘Night Before Christmas’ down below.
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